


We're Going Up

by alcoholandregret



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2017 sure was a rough year for mikey wasn't it, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-08 17:24:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14110332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alcoholandregret/pseuds/alcoholandregret
Summary: “We aren’t friends,” Mikey says honestly, albeit perhaps a little more biting than he’d really intended it to be.“I’d like to be,” he says quietly, and Mikey can hardly hear him. He pulls a sharpie out of his pocket and takes Mikey’s arm lightly, and he resists the urge to pull it away when Charlie starts to write a phone number on it. “If you want.”





	We're Going Up

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Levels by Nick Jonas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X-V34Ly_Z4)

Mikey’s interactions with Charlie McAvoy have been pretty sporadic, which, well, is hardly surprising, considering  _ most _ things. Different leagues, countries, etc. The whole nine yards. They chatted during the Combine a few times, nothing too memorable, and at the draft itself they were picked close enough to congratulate each other in passing before getting pulled in different directions to do media stuff.

That’s really it.

Team Canada, at its core, has two pretty big rivalries. Russia and the US, obviously, but it’s always kind of a shock at international events how everyone seems to take that to the next level, sometimes not even interacting with friends that are on those other teams. Mikey gets the competition thing - they’re all here to win - but going to that extent feels a little… excessive.

Charlie, apparently, seems to think the same thing, because every time they run into each other - which is happening way more often than one would think possible - he just. Starts talking. Mikey doesn’t mind it, not at all, he just doesn’t understand  _ why. _ The conversations are light and pleasant enough, the usual ‘talking without talking at all’ thing acquaintances do until one of their teammates drag them away like they’re school kids on a playground and  _ our _ group is not, under any circumstances, to talk to  _ that _ group. It’s kind of a shame, because he seems friendly enough.

Once round robin ends, it almost seems like Keller is physically restraining McAvoy any time MIkey passes them. It’s funny in a way, like he needs a babysitter. Or a leash. He’s on the Terriers, right? So definitely like that. An excitable puppy that needs to kept at bay any time they go out in public. It’s a little endearing, if he’s to be honest.

He misses the chats, just the slightest bit, because they came as a welcome distraction. 

He’s not… playing. Like, okay, he’s here, and that’s fucking wild, but he wishes he could at least get the  _ chance _ to contribute a little. 

Charlie is kicking ass. Not that he’s paying attention to him specifically.

It comes as no surprise, really, that the final is between Team Canada and Team USA. It’s good - at the bare minimum, he supposes - for the narrative. Everyone loves a good rivalry.

He still hardly plays, and he tries not to let that hurt.

The game goes to a shootout, and he almost doesn’t want to watch.

Team USA pile on top of each other, and it feels like he’s crumbling. A glance around at his team shows that he’s not alone in that.

They line up, and they accept their silver medals, and Mikey feels like this little piece of metal on a ribbon is weighing him down so much that he might not even be able to make it off the ice.

He catches Charlie’s eye leaving the arena, and neither of them have to be told not to talk. Mikey doesn’t want anything to do with them, with this tournament, with the silver burning his chest where it sits. He just wants to go home, back to his team, back to where he can  _ play. _ This hurts, it fucking  _ hurts _ and it sucks and he accepts the alcohol handed to him when a group of them end up in Dylan’s room.

They all drink a little too much, and he needs to be getting back to his own room, so he steps out, stealing a bottle of water from their room’s mini fridge on the way out.

He doesn’t make it past the elevator, deciding that, despite it being the middle of winter, it would be a good idea to go sit outside on one of the benches in the little courtyard of the hotel. It takes three tries to hit the lobby button on the elevator, but he does it eventually and sighs on the way down, pressing his cheek against the cold wall. It barely registers that that’s pretty gross before the doors open and he heads outside. 

It’s colder than he thought it would be. Maybe it’ll sober him up some.

Mikey stares up at the stars for what feels like hours, sipping at the water and feeling like he’s in some kind of teen sports drama. Maybe it’s the kind that means he’s going to come back next year and play and win. A redemption arc of sorts.

It feels unlikely.

He hears snow crunch beside him, and he turns to see… pretty much exactly who he expected it to be.

“Hey,” Charlie says, smile a little lopsided.

“Hey,” Mikey replies, itching to be anywhere but right here, talking to anyone but him. Well, maybe not  _ anyone, _ because he’d like to exclude everyone else from Team USA too, thanks.

Not seeming to understand that - obviously intoxicated too, a too-happy drunk, maybe - he sits down right next to Mikey and twists his hands around in his lap like he’s thinking hard about something.

Mikey looks back up at the stars and waits.

“I-” he starts at the same time Mikey sighs “please,” and they both stop in their tracks.

Not really knowing what he was even planning on saying -  _ please, don’t,  _ maybe - he waves a hand in Charlie’s direction, giving him the floor. 

“I was gonna say-” his hands still “-that I… don’t really know what to say.”

Mikey snorts.

“Sorry.”

“Go celebrate with your team, Charlie.”

“I just wanted to-”

“We aren’t friends,” he says honestly, albeit perhaps a little more biting than he’d really intended it to be. It isn’t like he’s  _ lying _ or even just being outright rude. They  _ aren’t  _ friends.  _ Friendly,  _ maybe, but not tonight. Not right now. He has to understand that.

He looks over at him again, only to watch him deflate at the words, looking far too sad for a person that just won a gold medal.

“I’d like to be,” he says quietly, and Mikey can hardly hear him. He pulls a sharpie out of his pocket and takes Mikey’s arm lightly, and he resists the urge to pull it away when Charlie starts to write a phone number on it. “If you want.”

With that, he gets up and leaves, and Mikey washes the digits off the moment he gets back to his hotel room, not thinking about the contact he’d made in his phone on the elevator back up.

After he gets back to Mississauga, he looks around the locker room -  _ his _ locker room - and pulls on his laces a little more aggressively than necessary.

He’s going to drag this team to the Memorial Cup kicking and screaming if he has to.

So he picks it up, bearing more weight than he needs to, but he’s playing some of the best hockey he has in a long time. Maybe ever. People notice, the  _ Devils _ notice, and it feels good, but they’re not there yet.

They win the East, and they’re one step closer. One more series. Four more games.

It only takes five, and Mikey takes second again. No medals this time, just handshakes and clenched jaws.

He gives his best speech in the locker room, tries not to look at the fallen faces of his teammates - his family, the one he let down - and they load the bus back to their hotel. The ride is silent, save for the muffled sniffling throughout the rows. Everyone’s hurting, he knows this, but it still feels like none of them know just what losing is like. Not like he does.

He thinks of the silver medal in a shoebox under his bed back home, and steps into the bathroom the moment they get back into their rooms, no hesitation when he presses call on the contact he’d tried so hard to forget he even had.

“Hello?”

“What’s it like,” Mikey swallows, “to win something?”

“Who is this?” Charlie asks slowly.

“Mikey,” he sighs and leans against the door, slowly sliding down until he’s sitting on the floor. “Mikey McLeod.”

There’s a long pause. “I didn’t think you kept my number.”

“Well, I did.” He tucks his knees up to his chest and it gets harder to keep himself from crying with every passing second. Holding himself high in the locker room and the entire bus ride over is starting to weigh down on him.

“I see that,” and then, “what’s wrong?”

Mikey laughs bitterly. “Thought you were still friends with Brinksy.”

“I am- oh.”

He doesn’t say anything. Neither of them do. He doesn’t even know why he called him.

The tears stream down Mikey’s face, then, too hot in the cold air of the bathroom, and it feels like they burn pathways down his cheeks.

“I don’t know what to say,” Charlie says, and Mikey remembers hearing those exact words last time too.

“I guess you wouldn’t.”

“That’s not fair.”

It feels fair to him. He’s allowed to be angry. “Yes, it’s-”

“No. It’s not.”

He can’t help but laugh, “why not?”

“Don’t follow college hockey, do you?”

He  _ does,  _ not like, closely or anything, especially not after Matt’s season ended, but-

Oh.

“Sorry.”

“It may not have been in the finals, but it still fucking sucked,” Charlie sounds tired and kind of pissed off, which, like, Mikey earned that.

“I’m sorry, fuck,” he wipes at his eyes and his phone clatters to the floor, which pretty much opens the floodgates. He won’t cry in front of his own team, trying to stay strong for them or something, even he doesn’t know. He won’t cry in front of his own brother who’s probably just waiting for him to leave the bathroom. Despite these things, he’ll let himself cry while he talks to Charlie. He can’t  _ see _ him, and they never talk, so it isn’t like he has a reputation to uphold or an example to set. His voice is shaking when he picks his phone up and speaks again. “I didn’t mean to-”

“Hey,” he says, voice softer now. “I know. You’re upset.”

“I don’t know why I called you.”

“Me neither. But I’m glad you did.”

“Why?”   


“I have your number now.”

Mikey’s laugh isn’t bitter this time, and it bubbles out of him in surprise, sounding just a little too watery. “I guess you do.”

“You know what’s fucking stupid?”

“What?”

“I have an exam in three days but finals are so soon. It’s unfair.”

Mikey laughs again, and it feels a little less like his chest is collapsing in on itself, so that’s nice. “Shouldn’t you be studying?”

“Are you kidding me?” Charlie laughs, “why would I study when I get to talk to you? One of those things are much less fun than the other.”

He leaves the bathroom two hours later, feeling much better - not great, not even good, but better, still. Maybe being Charlie’s friend wouldn’t be so bad after all. 

Not that he ever really thought it would be  _ bad _ in the first place.

_ Good luck on your exam _ he texts him when he wakes up Monday morning.

_ that sucked  _ is the response he gets a few hours later.

_ That bad? _

_ probably not  _ and then  _ I’m on my way to dunkin call me after I leave? _

_ How am I supposed to know when u leave _

_ good point _

He gets a phone call forty minutes later and spends the rest of the day on the phone.

It’s a good distraction from everything, really, and they spend most of the time Charlie isn’t in class talking, which is nice. Once he gets closer to finals they switch to FaceTime, and Mikey is definitely supposed to be helping him stay focused, but he has pretty much the opposite effect. Neither of them point that out.

Charlie does well enough on the finals anyway.

A new habit that starts once he gets home for the summer, Mikey finds, is they fall asleep while talking pretty often. And sometimes he’ll wake up in the middle of the night with his phone stuck to the side of his face, the sound of his friend’s even breathing on the other line. Or it’ll be where he left it, propped up against a pillow beside him and he’ll see Charlie’s face slack with sleep, and he tries not to let his chest tighten every time.

He does take screenshots of it on occasion, and tells himself each time he does that it’s for, like, blackmail purposes or something.

He realises he might be in a little too deep when he sends one of them to Charlie after he wakes up again in the morning, and in return he gets a screenshot of  _ him _ asleep, hair sticking up in every direction, captioned  _ I can do that too. _

So. Maybe he has a thing for his friend. That’s fine. He can ignore that.

Until he can’t.

It’s like this, okay? He doesn’t give himself  _ time _ to ignore it, not when he’s more or less always talking to Charlie in some way. Nate’s called him out on it. Dylan has too. Fuck, even  _ DeBrincat  _ has. He doesn’t care, not when he’s managing to have a summer where he has an actual balance of improving for the season and  _ not _ worrying about making the team. Well, obviously he’s worried about it, and focused and driven and all those things, but. Nate saw him last year, pushing himself too far, stretching too thin.

He told him, once, that he’s glad Mikey has Charlie. The Nate seal of approval - even if he hadn’t asked for it - is what kind of made it really settle for him.

This is a good thing.

It doesn’t come as a surprise when he starts watching Charlie’s mouth more when he speaks, or when he runs a hand through his hair how badly he wishes he could chase it with his own. It looks soft. Like, really soft.

So. Yeah.

As August dies out, they get more and more excited about their rookie camps and the Prospect Challenge they’re both going to in Buffalo, and sometimes it feels like Mikey can feel Charlie’s buzzing like it was coming from his own chest. It’s just contagious.

Everything about Charlie is.

Then they find out their last game of the event is against each other, and Mikey can’t stop smiling - mostly because his friend called him pretty much immediately, and  _ he _ can’t stop smiling.

Being in the same city, the same place again - it reminds him of World Juniors in a way, seeing him in passing every now and then. The difference this time is no one tries to drag them away, and they have actual conversation, and-

Well. The feelings are pretty new.

It’s good, but he’s here to prove himself, so the focus needs to be there. Nate tells him he’s being a child when he says that, but whatever. They’ll have time after their game in a few days, anyway. He can wait.

He can’t wait.

Luckily enough, the time flies, and he tapes his sticks in the locker room, getting ready for warm ups. Getting ready to see Charlie on the opposite side of the ice for the first time since he had tasted defeat and cheap vodka.

The memory is as hard to swallow as the alcohol. 

He takes the ice and focuses on the future, of Devils and Bruins and not Canada and USA.

The excitement of getting to spend actual time with his friend is… dampened by the 9-3 loss to say the least. Part of him wonders if he’s always going to lose to Charlie, but he stuffs that down, because that’s not what he needs to be thinking about. Not when Charlie text him a room number and he feels something in his stomach do somersaults. 

“I’m gonna go hang out with Nater,” he tells Miles and stuffs a room key in his pocket. Obviously there’s no  _ real  _ reason to lie, but it feels like he has to - not because he’s on the other team, these guys may chirp him but they don’t actually give a fuck about that, but because he remembers being dragged away a few months ago.

“‘Kay,” he shrugs, not looking up from his phone.

Charlie’s room is two floors above Mikey’s, and he knows if he takes the elevator he’ll be too antsy, so he takes the stairs two at a time to try to burn some energy.

Checking three times that he has the right room, he knocks on the door, and it opens pretty much immediately.

“Hey,” Charlie smiles and moves aside so Mikey can come in.

“Hey,” he smiles back, and once the door is shut, he holds his arms open slightly, an invitation that’s taken right away. Mikey presses his cheek into the side of his head, and it’s really nice, and he kind of doesn’t want to let go, but he does. Eventually. Just after it’s been a little longer than a hug probably should be. Who cares, really.

“Roommate?” he asks when Charlie turns to start walking further into the room.

“Out with some of the team,” he shrugs.

“Do you ever celebrate with your team,” Mikey teases, “or do you always hang out with the loser instead? Pretty charitable of you.”

“Look, I-” Charlie turns back to him and runs a hand through his hair. “I’ll just get this over with so you can leave if you want.”

He looks at Mikey like he’s waiting for a response, but Mikey’s frozen, because what the hell could  _ that _ possibly mean? He’s honestly a little concerned about what he could possibly say to make him want to leave.

He nods, a too sharp movement.

“Can I kiss you?”

His mind blanks, and he still feels frozen, so he nods again, quick little ones that probably make him look over-eager, but sue him.  _ Look _ at the guy. Obviously he wants to kiss him. Holy shit.

Charlie looks relieved, taking the few steps over to Mikey, putting one hand on his hip and bunching up the collar of his worn down Steelheads shirt in the other. “Finally,” he hardly breathes out before closing both his eyes and the gap between their mouths. 

It takes Mikey a second to recover, shutting his eyes too, and it takes another to sink in completely. Not only is this happening, but he can  _ finally  _ get a hand in Charlie’s hair. So he does, grabbing a handful of it, not tight enough to cause any discomfort at all, but when he tugs on it, Charlie gasps a little.

He squeezes Mikey’s hip and pulls back slightly, huffing like he just double-shifted. “Okay, okay.”

“Okay?” he lets go of his hair, letting his hand rest at the base of his neck.

“I’ve wanted to do that for over a year,” he says, cheeks red. “Lived up to the hype.”

“What hype?” Mikey laughs.

“Mine.”

Mikey wants to laugh at him for that, but instead his mouth says “your hair is really soft.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Oh?” Mikey raises an eyebrow.

Charlie smiles and nods. “Oh yeah, definitely.”

“Trying to make me jealous or something, McAvoy?”

“Oh yeah,” the grin stretches a little further. “Definitely.”

“Evil,” Mikey shakes his head. “You kiss a guy  _ once.” _

“Hoping for more than once.”

“I think that can be arranged.”

**Author's Note:**

> what's this? a new mikey rarepair? what a surprise. truly. you should all be shocked. hope you enjoyed anyway!
> 
> catch me on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/alcoholnregret) and [tumblr](http://www.sidnate.tumblr.com)


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